Tactical Execution

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Hello and welcome to Tactical Execution, an information series exploring innovative marketing and strategic business positioning for entrepreneurs and small businesses in an increasingly competitive world.  My name is Patrick and I’m your host.  You can find written versions of these podcasts at TacticalExecution.com and I encourage your candid feedback at the same location.  Today, we’ll be talking about viral marketing so let’s get started.

The last chapter was about marketing on MySpace and I left out one of the most important tools you can use in that forum.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I mentioned it.  But I didn’t spend any time on it.  It’s called viral marketing and if you hit it right, it can exponentially magnify the results of your marketing campaign.

Let’s start with a definition.  Viral marketing tries to take advantage of an existing social network by injecting something into the group that will voluntarily be passed along with no effort by YOU.  In other words, you’re trying to create something that people will voluntarily pass along to their friends, even though it likely contains a marketing message of some kind.

We’ve all received emails that have some uplifting message or story.  And if we decide to read it, at the bottom, it encourages us to pass the message along to five or seven friends.  In some cases, we’re supposedly in store for some good luck if we do it.  Well, you can imagine my opinion about comments like that but the fact is; this is a type of viral marketing.  Admittedly, these email messages generally do not contain a commercial marketing message but that’s beside the point.  If the message gets passed along, it’s a viral effect.  The message is reaching new people without any input from the person who created it.

There are tons of studies on these social communication mediums and the findings usually vary somewhat but I read recently that a person who likes a product or service will generally tell about 3 friends.  On the other hand, a person who does NOT like a product or service will tell about 11 friends.  And those numbers seem to be fairly consistent from one study to the next.  The point is; you can benefit OR suffer at the hands of viral marketing.  If someone liked what you had to offer, the word WILL spread.  But if someone DIDN’T like what you had to offer, the word will generally spread much quicker.  So you have to be a bit careful with stuff like this.

Fact is; viral marketing takes place whether you want it or not.  People socialize.  People have friends.  People talk to other people.  This is nothing new.  It’s common sense.  And it’s the primary argument behind good customer service.  If you treat your customers well, the word will spread.  But if you treat your customers poorly, the word will spread even quicker.  The active engagement of this dynamic only brings it to a more deliberate level.  Viral marketing is the intentional engagement of social dynamics to promote your product or service.

People have tried to capitalize on this stuff for years.  The whole network marketing craze tries to capitalize on social networks and a form of viral marketing.  The idea is that people should be able to tell other people how great some product is and then sell it through direct channels.  On paper, it makes a lot of sense.  But as many of you know, network marketing tends to blur the line between business and friendships and that usually manages to offend people.  Yes, it can work.  In fact, network marketing has created plenty of millionaires over the years.  Still does.  But for every one person who truly succeeds, hundreds or even thousands fail.

So, let’s think about that for a second.  On average, a person who has a good experience tells 3 friends.  And a person who has a bad experience tells about 11 friends.  So if we could project those same numbers on the income side of network marketing, you’d have one person who succeeds and that person tells 3 other people.  So there are four people out there who know the good news.  The other hundred or so have a bad experience and they tell 11 people each.  So now you’ve got 3 people who know the good news and 1100 who know the bad news.

Don’t get me wrong.  I understand it doesn’t actually work like this.  In network marketing circles, EVERYONE knows the story about the one guy who made it rich.  EVERYBODY knows how great his life is.  EVERYBODY knows the buckets of money he’s getting each and every month.  But that doesn’t negate the point.  Everybody ALSO hears about the hundreds of people who couldn’t make it work.  Everybody hears about the failures.  And the biggest problem is that everybody IN the network marketing company tell the one success story and everybody who’s NOT yet in the network marketing company tells all the opposite, making the recruiting process almost impossible.

My point is that viral marketing is the theoretical justification behind network marketing but it’s ALSO the biggest reason network marketing will never succeed long-term.  Unless that industry can figure out a way of getting MORE people to succeed financially, it’s doomed to self-destruct over time.  The primary reason behind its business model is the same reason for its inevitable failure.  Anyway, I’m sorry.  I guess my opinions are pretty obvious on this one.  I hope I didn’t offend anyone.

So, today’s internet world is full of social networks.  MySpace is a HUGE social network.  LinkedIn, Facebook, Bebo.  They’re all big social networks.  And everyone’s contacts folders full of email addresses represents another, slightly less structured but far bigger, social network.  It’s extremely easy to pass something along if you’re motivated to do so.  So what motivates someone to pass something along to a friend?

Well, if you found something you think your friends will think is COOL, you’ll probably want to pass it along.  In fact, you’ll probably want to pass it along BEFORE any of your friends do, so YOU can get the credit for the find.  What if you found something really funny?  Well, you’d probably want to pass that along too.  What if you found something really interesting of fascinating?  Again, you’d have an incentive to pass it along.

Let’s look at this podcast.  It’s a perfect example, isn’t it?  I mean; I listen to podcasts all the time and I constantly tell other people about the ones I like or the ones I truly think they’d benefit from.  In fact, I was out at an event last night and ended up recommending a podcast.  And hopefully, you have found good information on THIS podcast series and I truly hope you’ll tell your friends about it.  That’s how this stuff spreads.  With my first “Beyond the Rate” podcast series, I ended up with these pockets of listeners, these groups of people who all knew about my series and had listened to it along the way.  It made it nicer later on when I started giving workshops on the topic because I got entire groups of people who already knew each other long before I came on the scene.  It was all driven by viral marketing.

In the end, I think you can categorize all viral marketing success stories into one of two buckets.  The item being passed on was either entertaining or it provided real value.  Now, by being entertaining, I’m including things that were funny, unbelievable, disgusting, arousing, incredible or shocking.  And the ones providing real value were either educational, inspirational, fascinating, enlightening or motivational.  And if you want to capitalize on the potential, you’d better think of something that falls into one of those camps.

I recently introduced the G7 internet utility.  I’m assuming most of you already know about this but for those who don’t, it’s an awesome web portal that integrates many of the internet’s most powerful websites into a single portal.  The website is G7search.com – again, that’s G7search.com – and you can check it out the next time your online.  I’ve put links to it on the TacticalExecution.com website.

The point is; it’s really really useful.  Almost everyone who’s ever seen it LOVES it.  It provides real value.  And at the very bottom, it has two links, one to Tactical Execution and one to the sister series called Financial Audio.  Other than that, it’s entirely NON-commercial.  It’s clean and simple but it offers a ton of value for people who use it.  And because it provides real value, its spread like crazy on the internet.  All those people who find G7 also find my two podcast series.

G7 acts like a funnel for my podcasts.  And my podcasts act like a funnel for my consulting and speaking services.  Each step invites users to get to know me a little bit better.  It invites them to sample my VALUE a little more, building their trust and exposure to my approach.  Usually, by the time people actually CALL me for something, they already know a ton about me.  They’ve already used G7.  They’ve already listened to my podcasts.  They’ve already visited my website.  There’s no sales process left.  They already know exactly what they’re getting.  They already know exactly what to expect.

Anyway, that’s more of a discussion about sales funnels than viral marketing but you get the idea.  G7 works because it provides real value and people spread the word on their own, introducing me to more and more people every day.

Look at YouTube.  YouTube is FULL of viral marketing efforts.  People and companies are putting together videos that are funny or incredible or whatever, and they’re posting them on YouTube, hoping people will tag them and pass them along to friends.  Look at Hillary Clinton.  Recently, she did a YouTube video spoofing The Saprano’s cable television show.  She used the video to announce the winning song behind a campaign song contest she held to select a theme song for her campaign.  Now, obviously, she gets plenty of publicity just because of her political career but her gamble really paid off.  That video was passed along to millions of different people without any input from her at all.  Once she posted it on YouTube – well, she probably sent out a press release – but beyond that, the rest happened on its own.

Last year, I entered a public speaking competition and delivered a speech entitled Deliberate Curiosity.  The speech had an inspirational message about maintaining your youth by staying curious – deliberately curious – and resisting the instinct to get too “set in our ways”.  That contest ended up being an incredible experience for me but the point is that at one point, I sent out the text of Deliberate Curiosity in a monthly email newsletter.  Well, little did I realize, people on my list had taken that text and passed it along to their OWN friends and family.  I only found out four or five days later when I got an email from a lady in Connecticut – a lady I’ve never met – who wanted to make a comment about Deliberate Curiosity.  Amazing.  Viral marketing at work.  Don’t underestimate the power of viral marketing.

So, how can you use viral marketing to boost your OWN business?  Well, I would start by getting down to the basics and spend some real time thinking about how you can make yourself useful to your target market.  I know I always come back to that, but it really IS the center piece of my approach to marketing.  Make yourself useful.  What can you provide that your audience will truly appreciate.  Believe me; if they TRULY appreciate it, they’ll pass it along without any prodding by you.

As I mentioned earlier, the other strategy is to provide something funny or entertaining.  Honestly, this isn’t MY personal strong suit.  Yeah, I guess I can be funny from time to time, but it usually happens spontaneously.  Whenever I TRY to be funny, I always sound stupid.  So I don’t try.  But I’ve got a friend who runs a local dating service and he’s a really really funny guy.  He’s just that way.  He always comes up with one quip or another.  And he incorporates humor in all his marketing.  It’s great.  I love getting his stuff.  It always makes me laugh.  And I’m sure people pass it along for that reason alone.

Making funny or shocking videos is a whole new level but YouTube makes that option all the more viable.  You put a really funny on YouTube?  Get ready.  If it really is funny, it could spread like wildfire!  And yes, there are lots of people trying to do the exact same thing but believe me; the viewers of these videos have a never-ending appetite for the latest and greatest addition to the mix.  If you’ve got a clever funny idea, try it out.  You might be surprised at the response you get.

Viral marketing represent a very real opportunity for modern businesses.  Done properly, it can give your business dimension and depth.  It can give your business a personality; something for your customers to identify with.  And that’s really what today’s consumers want.  They want to feel like they really know the company they’re buying from.  They want to feel connected to the business.  They want to trust the people they spend money with.  And that’s exactly what this is all about.  Give your market a piece of yourself.  Give them real value.  Have a sense of humor and give your business some personality.  Be real.  Be human.  And the rest will take care of itself.

Please visit TacticalExecution.com to get an itemized list of things you can do TODAY to start getting results.  It’s a FREE 1-page PDF file in the members-only section so you have to register and log in, and then you’ll find it under the “Resources” tab.

You can also view upcoming topics by clicking the Marketing tab under Podcast Chapters.  If you have a suggestion for future topics, please use the Contact form to let us know.  And finally, all the websites referenced on this podcast have been included on the Links page.

Okay, thank you very much for listening.  If you like what you hear on these podcasts, please tell a friend about them.  Modern technology like podcasting can help elevate new and innovative thinkers but we all have to play our part to help spread the word for those who deserve our endorsements.  If I am deserving of yours, my thanks.

I DO offer workshops, seminars and keynote speeches as well as consulting services so please email me at Patrick [at] TacticalExecution.com for more information.  I’m also doing an extensive podcast series on stock market investing, real estate finance and the economy.  It’s called Financial Audio and you can find it on iTunes.

Stay tuned.  There is a lot more to come.  In the meantime, think big, take action and market strategically.  Bye for now.